Smokva is a wondrous community garden, at the Croatian Wickham Sports Club Cooperative, Newcastle NSW.

Smokva occupies the same space of the historic Fig Tree Community Garden. The name Smokva, translating to ‘fig tree’ in Croatian, is a reference to this old garden from which we inherited a lot of infrastructure and legends.

Fig Tree Community Garden commenced in July 2005 following the closure of the Morrow Park Bowling Club and subsequent relocation of the community garden operating there. At the time of commencing, Fig Tree included a network of 50 individuals and a number of organizations including Links to Learning, Toogoolawa School, Migrant Resource Centre, TAFE Outreach, and Baptist Community Services. This association of individuals and groups relocated approx 500 metres across Wickham Park to the current site at the Croatian Wickham Sports Club. where it continued to operate for 10 years.

In 2020 a new group of locals reassembled to take over the management of the garden. They incorporated as a new association (Fig Tree Community Association) which helps manage the garden with and for the Croatian Club Members. It was named after the previous community garden, before the name change.

From 2020 we have had regular Friday working bees and Sundays once per month, these involve tending to the garden with a good dose of conversations and morning tea.

We collect food scraps from Momo cafe and the waste is processed into compost by someone who is casually employed. We offer other positions for mutual obligation volunteers.

We have collaborated on community workshops with Newcastle Library on seed saving, beneficial predators, backyard chicken keeping. We have also delivered our own water wisdom workshops and DIY bokashi bacteria.

For more articles and images about the garden see In The Media.